


Pretend Like You're Asleep

by scioscribe



Category: Community
Genre: Fluff, Gen, Napping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-22
Updated: 2012-10-22
Packaged: 2017-11-16 20:07:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/543348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scioscribe/pseuds/scioscribe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five naps members of the study group took, all of which have dramatic impact and significance and aren't at all just related to my love of sleep-cute.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pretend Like You're Asleep

**Author's Note:**

> The summary was a lie.
> 
> Also, Troy riffs on _Hot Fuzz._

**1**

Britta was the master—mistress? Mistress—Britta was the mistress of falling asleep on top of people. She might not have liked being touched in the normal everyday course of things, but she was the best at the lean-into-it nap, perfected during a youth spent living life as it was meant to be lived, except mostly in the back of a van with six other people whose hair all smelled like pot and microwaved bean burritos. She could rock her head into the crook of somebody’s shoulder-neck area and be out like a light. _Boom_. Like a ninja breaking into slumberland, _all stealth_.

Sleeping on top of the study group was an eensy bit different. For one thing, they smelled better, and she was less likely to end up coated in nuclear orange Cheeto dust all down one side. For another thing, they came with _emotions_. Not squishy, culturally-indoctrinated emotions about wanting a white dress or a baby, but ones that she just—hadn’t really had before, because there hadn’t been anybody for her to have them about.

Then she and Annie stayed in the library overnight trying to pretend they were worldly enough to know actual facts about soccer that they could translate into _español_ for Chang’s weekly “you all talk about stuff in Spanish while I pelt you with pieces of chalk” laff-riot.

“The more this goes on,” Annie said at three in the morning, wild-eyed, bits of her eraser stuck under her thumbnail, “the more I become okay with the prospect of an A-minus.”

“Wait,” Britta said. “You mean we’ve been doing all this work and you think we already have an _A-minus_?” She felt like there was a rake moving around inside of her brain, scraping against the inside of her skull, nails on a chalkboard of her own bones. “Annie, no offense, but what. The. Hell. Who stays awake until three in the morning for, what, two percentage points that aren’t between an F and a D-? How are you a person that exists in the world?”

“I don’t think you understand how difficult it is for me to make sacrifices in an academic context,” Annie said, all sniffly. “But you’re right. I do need to learn to relax. College is—college is a time to grow as a person, right? To accept failure.”

“It’s not failure, Annie. _It’s an A-minus_.”

Annie made a seesawing motion with her hand, like failure and an A-minus were rough equivalents in her world, and then said, “Drive me home? I missed the last bus, and I don’t really want to call my parents. I’m trying to get them to accept my independence.”

Britta could stand up to Annie’s Disney princess eyes better than most (cough, _Jeff_ , cough), but she couldn’t stay angry when anyone pulled the family card. Britta hadn’t been a good daughter, but she was a great black sheep, and always willing to help somebody else separate themselves from the herd a little.

That didn’t change the fact that if she tried to drive now, she’d end up running them both into the Luis Guzman statue, and killing the one thing on campus the Dean loved more than Jeff: the aspirational spirit of a school where seventy-five percent of the students came to class in pajamas, but everyone had seen _Boogie Nights_. She explained this to Annie, minus the _Boogie Nights_ part—because if anyone was going to be the one-percent on that, it was Annie Edison, and Britta didn’t want to feel older than she had to right then—and Annie nodded slowly.

“Well, staying here—it’ll be like a slumber party.”

“Right. Only we won’t be painting each other’s nails or telling ghost stories, and one of us won’t lock the other one outside because it’s so funny to watch them circle around trying to find an unlocked window.” Sometimes some of her own stuff seeped through. She tried to remember that Annie was adorable and traditionally feminine and not likely to get her hand put in warm water, or be the girl locked out in the cold just because she wanted to be Kurt Cobain for Halloween instead of a fairy princess, but then Annie’s eyes crinkled at the edges with _memory_ instead of _oh Britta_ -ness, and Britta remembered: Annie had been unpopular, too. Too driven, too fierce, too _Annie_ for high school.

Britta grabbed onto her hand. “It’s time we had a good sleepover, Annie.”

They fell asleep leaning against each other on the couch, Annie’s feet curled up in Britta’s lap and Britta’s cheek on Annie’s bony shoulder, her hand down where Annie ended up drooling on it a little. And Britta had been drooled on a lot, over the years, by a lot of different people, but none of it had ever been as sweet as it was gross, not until her study group. It wasn’t something she was advertising—Britta will go gaga for adult spit-up after naptime!—but it was, all the same, at least a little cute, and it did weird things to her heart. So if she started to find excuses to nap against everybody, well, that was nobody’s beeswax but hers.

**2**

Pierce Hawthorne did not nap. He periodically recharged, as per the requirements of a Level Five Laser Lotus, by closing his eyes and letting the inside of his mind draw pictures of naked women until he reached a state of ecstasy that some might term “sleep.”

But if he were going to nap, he wouldn’t mind napping with Shirley. There wasn’t much he would mind doing with Shirley, actually, but somehow when he framed it like that, she was offended.

Still, never let it be said that he was too proud to go hat in hand to a beautiful woman and tell her how he felt about her, or at least twenty-five percent of how he felt about her.

“Shirley. Would you like to take a nap with me in the study room?”

Shirley folded her hands over her handbag, the one that Pierce suspected must’ve had some sort of lady secret in it, because there was nothing he needed to carry around day-to-day that size, besides his own particular incarnation of the Hawthorne family gift. (His penis.) She narrowed her eyes. She was beautiful even when she was angry.

“I thought we’d established that I’m only interested in you as a friend.”

“I’m proposing a friendly nap. You’ve napped with other people in the group.”

“Other people in the group don’t send me X-rated photographs of themselves in email accounts that I might open at my mother’s house. I’ll pass, thanks.”

“Come on,” he said. He could command boardrooms and factories and, on one memorable occasion, a white tiger. “A catnap. Fifteen minutes at the outside, just so I don’t feel like I’m the only one in the group you can’t relax with. You’re back with your ex-husband, who knows when we’ll start hearing wedding bells for you? Some men want a kiss when a former paramour lights a new flame, Shirley. I just want your head against my shoulder and the sweetness of your trust, as conveyed through sleep. That’s not so much to ask.”

“No, but you did phrase it just about as creepily as you possibly could.” She stood up, though, smiling anyway, and Pierce smiled back: he’d charmed her. He still had.

“Fifteen minutes,” she said, but he stole twenty from her, in the end, and it was his head on her shoulder. Even Level Five Laser Lotuses got tired, sometimes, and needed a little peace and quiet with a friend.

**3**

“Because I’m not five years old?”

“Because no one’s going to give me a juice box and graham crackers afterwards?”

“Because naptime is for people who have given up on life?”

\--were three possible reasons that Jeff tried in rapid succession.

“You sleep in class,” Abed said, with one of those birdlike head movements that might as well have said _processing information_. “Yesterday, Tuesday, last Friday, twice last Thursday—”

“Yes. I sleep. I don’t _nap_. I don’t deliberately lie down in a comfortable position for the sake of _rest_ , for God’s sake.” He didn’t know how to make it clear to Abed that there was a world—a Model U.N. Red Earth/Blue Earth world—of difference between falling asleep in class because you were so much better than whatever else was going on and intentionally, with aforethought, curling up on a couch with a platonic male friend to sleep during the day like he was Pierce or something.

“Why not?”

“We just did that part, Abed. Can’t _Troy_ take a nap with you?”

“He can,” Abed said. “He does. We did yesterday, and then earlier this morning—I haven’t been sleeping well lately.” He paused. “I have nightmares about Pillowtown and the Legit Republic of Blanketsburg, only the war doesn’t stop. New Fluffytown collapses, and we all just keep on fighting. And Troy and I keep on fighting. So I haven’t been getting much sleep.”

He reached up above his head, fingers groping in the air, and when Jeff realized what he was looking for, something went inexplicably tight in his throat.

“It’s still there,” Jeff said.

“I know it’s a metaphor. But it works. Unless I’m asleep. I never remember to wear it in my dreams, but I don’t dream when I’m napping.”

“You wouldn’t have—Abed, you wouldn’t have not been friends anymore. You and Troy? I foresee many, many unfortunately cute years together, playing _Inspector Spacetime_ and watching _Northern Exposure_ reruns. There was no all tomato, and _not_ just because that’s not a real word. Everybody could have had some tomato.”

“That was a weaker speech than normal. And I don’t need one anyway. I need a nap, and I wanted you to take it with me, because I thought if you were there, I’d remember the hat.”

Jeff weighed all coolness options against the way Abed was looking at him right then and said, “Okay.”

They picked out a couch in the lounge. Abed leaned back, and then to his left, and then finally to his right, where he scrutinized Jeff for a second before resting his head on Jeff’s shoulder. Jeff felt the stiff brim of the imaginary friendship hat dig a little into his arm. He said, “Go to sleep, Abed,” and Abed nodded, the brim moving up and down in a wriggle, and closed his eyes.

**4**

Troy knew that Britta thought she was the best at napping, and that was sweet and all, but come on: Troy once napped standing up in a broom closet because he got sleepy while pretending to be a vampire. Good luck topping that one, Britta!

Still, Troy could share the wealth, and he was happy to nap with anybody. He’d even napped with Leonard one time—woke up without his watch, not doing that again, but, okay, he’d nap with anybody at least once. The way he figured it, napping was like playing football: it was something he was good at but afraid of until Greendale taught him to just relax about it.

The problem was, though, no one had ever taught the people in the air conditioning repair school that they were still part of Greendale; they thought they were better, because they would probably find jobs after graduation, and their cafeteria never served that taco surprise that was a bag of Fritos with a scoop of ground beef inside it. They’d never figured out that some stuff just didn’t matter. They were like first-semester Jeff, only without the good hair. Somebody had to do something about it, and since their old Vice Dean had been murdered by their _other_ less-old Vice Dean, that somebody had to be him. Just because they were creepy didn’t mean they didn’t need someone to tell them to lighten up and pretend to be a tree or something, like in drama class.

“And breathe,” Troy said, and they breathed. They always did whatever he told them to do. It was weird, like he was a human Bop-It or something, and they had to do what he said before some imaginary timer ran out. “Just in and out, deep breaths—okay. We’re calm? Everybody’s calm?”

Everybody was calm.

“Today,” Troy said, “I’m going to teach you something for the greater good.”

“ _The greater good_ ,” they all intoned, and he smiled. He’d taught them to do that as a birthday present to Abed. Generally, he tried not to use his air conditioning superpowers for personal stuff, but sometimes it was too hard to resist.

He cleared his throat and tried to sound important. “We’re going to take a nap.”

“But sire—”

“Wow, we’re not making that a thing, are we? Troy. My name is Troy. Or T-Bone. Or Constable Reggie, or Mr. Barnes, or—anything other than _sire_.”

“My lord—”

“Okay, we’re going to go with Troy.”

They pouted. They were so _weird_.

“Troy,” one of them said sulkily, “why do we have to take a nap?”

“You don’t have to,” Troy said, because he would be thrilled to have one of them decide _not_ to listen to him like he was a human Bop-It, after all. “I’m just saying that it’s fun, and I’m going to do it, and if you guys want, you can stay here and do it too. Sounds good?” That was when he realized that, in an attempt to sound commanding, he’d in fact channeled Shirley. He shrugged it off: he could do a lot worse for role models than a woman who’d once shoved someone’s face through a jukebox _and_ saved Pierce from drowning in a parking lot (again).

He laid down on his bed made of folding chairs. It kind of hurt the back of his head, but again—slept standing up in a closet. He crossed his hands across his chest and imagined he was a sexy Dracula until the world turned all silky and dark around the edges, like he’d covered up his eyes with a cape. He, Abed, and Annie had been watching all the old Universal and Hammer monster movies lately: Troy’s head was always full of Draculas and Wolfmen, but the scariest one was Frankenstein. Dracula was cool—he had an opera cape and a fancy accent—and the Wolfman couldn’t help what he was, but Frankenstein was the one who woke up, saw what he’d done, and ran away from it. Troy didn’t ever like him, even if he felt sorry for him once things really went bad.

He loved the monster, though. If Troy didn’t have a soft spot for stuff that was messed-up, he wouldn’t be trying to teach the air conditioning repair school how to take a nap.

He just didn’t like it when people ran away from things. Victor Frankenstein, Troy thought, should have stayed in bed a little longer, thought things over, and been a nice guy.

He woke up. Some of the air conditioning repair school was still there—some had left, and good for them, for realizing that he was just, like, a _guy_ —but some of them were there. They were just asleep.

Troy stayed—real men didn’t run away from things—and when they woke up, he sort of hoped that they would stay, too, that they’d see that he wasn’t what they’d hoped for, that he was sort of a mess, but that they wouldn’t run.

People were clearheaded after naps. They were going to have to see each other, really get a good look, and not run away screaming and turn each other into monsters. Being weird was different from being a monster. Troy could live with weird better than he could live with being a human Bop-It to the only people in the world who thought that what he did was cool and important.

He put his feet up on his other folding chair and waited.

**5**

Abed understood the napping phenomenon. Sometimes it was because they were tired, because Greendale only produced its magic after feeding on their energy, and sometimes it was because they were lonely, but mostly it was because they were broken, and they wanted to lay against each other to see if their edges would fit together like puzzle pieces. Abed wasn’t always good at metaphor, but he understood that much. He was good at puzzles and he was good at _them_.

He went twenty-two years without having friends, and then he had six.

One way or another, he fit against all of them. Whenever he remembered that, he could relax, and fall asleep.

He edged his feet up on the sofa, turned his head against Shirley’s arm, and smiled.


End file.
